The thoughts, semi-thoughts, splenetic rantings and vague half ideas, of a leftie-lib marooned in Palmerston North, New Zealand.

Saturday, 11 April 2015

British election - the week that was

What's really strange about all this is just how hopeless and confused the Tories have been. It isn't a surprise that there's an election happening. They knew it was going to happen. They've had FIVE YEARS to plan for this. And what have they got? Nothing. Well, as close to nothing as you can get, as you can't have nothing. Because there's nothing there to have. Okay, right, there's this cat, in a box, and if there's some poison in the ... Oh, never mind.

Anyway, like I said, they've had FIVE YEARS to plan this campaign. Which reminds me of a scene from the very great Grosse Point Blanc, which you should all watch:

Kinda crept up on you? No, time just PASSED. Like it does all the time, Dave. FIVE YEARS! FIVE! WHERE WERE YOU? And what have you got to show for it? Um ... Yup, that's it. The sound of nothing. No plan. No strategy. No Goddamn idea how you are going to persuade anyone to let you do it again except ... Ed Miliband. That's it. That's your strategy. And the Big Society. Which no-one liked last time, but maybe you thought we'd all forgotten about it or grown smarter and more appreciative of your benevolent cleverness in the FIVE YEARS when you weren't planning how to get re-elected or, I suspect, running the country.

Because if you had been running the country, you;d have something to show for it, and something to brag about other than ... Yeah, that's the sound of nothing again. Occasionally interrupted with the noise of broken promises from the last five years. Like leading the greenest government ever. Like reducing immigration to the tens of thousands. Like sorting out the deficit. Like protecting Sure Start funding. Like promising there would be no top down re-organisation of the NHS.

If I was a Tory, I'd be very bloody mad with David Cameron just now. Not because of those broken promises - a Tory would probably be quite pleased about that - but because other than breaking them, Cameron hasn't got anything to show for his five years in office, and if he can't rustle up something pretty quick, he isn't going to have the opportunity to carry on breaking promises for another five years.

So we get George Osborne promising us, with his most sincere face, that he'll let the NHS have billions more funding ... in five years, and if it can find tens of billions of cuts, sorry, efficiencies. And the utterly-missing-the-point idiocy of giving people paid time to volunteer. Only, even though that is a policy they were burbling about five years ago, which has still failed to be realised, and so is recycled (Greenest government EVAH!) for 2015. Only, they they still haven't thought it through, because no sooner did thee re-announce it than they had to do an about face and explain you couldn't take that time to work on behalf of a trade union - and by extension a lot of other worthy organisations that don't meet whatever definition of charity they are groping towards.

And so Ed Miliband moves a faltering step closer to Downing Street. The frightening thing is that he doesn't seem to be interested walking there himself. He's virtually being pushed by Cameron and the inept bumbling idiots behind the Tory campaign.

If Labour wins, it will be Cameron's victory - the one thing he'll have achieved in five years.